Wasted Youth: Reflections

By James M. Wright

"Wasted Youth is James Wright's vivid and emphatically unromantic memoir of his late teens and early twenties, when his life derived its meager meaning from consuming drugs and alcohol, dodging authority, and simply staying alive day to day. Relentlessly self-critical, Wright is not looking for pity or even sympathy from his reader. But

• Language: English
• Publisher: Metamorphic Press
• Release date: Apr 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869236739

James M. Wright

The author lives with his dear wife in a creaky old house on the coast of Maine. He worked for thirty-five years as a psychotherapist specializing in family therapy and wilderness-based therapy. Before that he planted hundreds of thousands of trees in the industrial forest of the Pacific Northwest. During those years he lived off the grid, built log cabins, learned how to lay stone, and survived numerous exploits of mountaineering, rock climbing, and backcountry skiing.

Book preview

1

Junior Crime

My career in crime and deviant behavior started with bottle caps, the old-fashioned kind. It was the early 60s, before the era of pull tabs and twist-off containers. At junior high, kids raced through lunch to get outside, the only relief from a day of desk-bound punishment. On the way out, you could buy a drink at the school store. Hundreds of kids poured into the courtyard, eager for sunshine and freedom. What better way to celebrate than by pinching a bottle cap between thumb and middle finger, cocking the hand over your shoulder, and with a snap, propelling the cap smartly through the air? Whoever thought it up was a genius of unintended use. With practice, it’ll fly fifty feet or more, whirling like a frisbee. The school administration did not see frisbees; they saw miniature saw blades. You could put someone’s eye out, they said. Soon after kids started doing it, flipping bottle caps was forbidden. Stern announcements crackled over the PA.

Being lost in my own world, I came late to the fad. When I finally mastered the flipping technique at home, I was so excited that I couldn’t wait to show off at school. Although I must have heard the announcements, I didn’t think they applied to me, only those other people, the kids that got it banned.

As soon as I sent a jagged cap sailing across the courtyard, a recess monitor grabbed me by the arm and marched me down to the vice principal’s office. Embarrassed, I listened to the lecture and received the note to take home to my parents. In addition, I had to see Mr. Barnard after school. The vice principal told me this while shaking his head and sighing, perhaps because I’d always been one of the good kids. This was my first school discipline. I didn’t know what to expect, just that the bad boys saw Mr. Barnard after school. I thought it would certainly involve more lecturing, but some of my peers knew better. In whispered confidence, I was informed that the bad boys received spats.

I’d taken a science class from Mr. Barnard. In the corner near his desk, he’d hung an array of wooden implements that resembled cricket bats. Some of them had holes drilled in the business end. I thought they looked creepy, like something out of a dungeon. But during lessons he ignored them.

When I arrived at Mr. Barnard’s room after school, maybe a dozen boys sat in place. These were not the boys I hung out with; these were the boys I avoided. Everyone said they were a bad lot, with their greasy hair and lip-curling sneers. Mr. Barnard called a name and a boy, nodding to his buddies, walked up to the teacher’s desk. Knowing what to expect, the boy bent over the desk, resting his weight on his elbows and presenting his bottom. Mr. Barnard selected a thick, holey paddle from his wall of now-frightening implements. Five spats, he announced. With ritual precision, he applied himself to serving the five blows, each landing with a resounding thwack and accompanied by a wince on the boy’s face. I saw right away that the holes enhanced the sting. Mr. Barnard did not go easy on the first boy.

I felt as if roused from a dream. I was going to get spanked, something my parents had only done once or twice, and with their hands, not a weapon. And this insult would be delivered at school, of all places. I quivered.

I watched the parade of boys as they were called to the front of the room. Mr. Barnard checked his list and announced a punishment commensurate with the gravity of each crime. It was an efficient process. You got your spats and returned to your seat to watch your comrades thrashed, reinforcing the lesson not to defy the rules, or that was the idea, anyway. Five was the most anyone got, but I noticed that Mr. Barnard would hit some boys harder than others. When it was my turn, he looked surprised as he called my name. He remembered me from when I took his class. What are you doing here? But my crime was printed on his list. He shrugged and motioned for me to bend over the desk. He picked a small paddle and gave me two whacks, neither of which hurt, though the impact jarred me to the quick.

I didn’t blame Mr. Barnard, but I rebelled at the procedure. The bad boys kept being bad; it was a lousy deterrent. I must have been the only kid in that classroom that didn’t repeat his offense. And my mother would have achieved that result with the simple look she gave me when I got home and I showed her the note she had to sign.

I stayed out of trouble for a couple of years. By fifteen, I had started high school and discovered science fiction fandom with its international network of fanzines, correspondence, and amateur press associations. I asked my parents for a typewriter, and they were pleased to get me one. I read so much it was only logical that I might want to write. Then I asked them for a mimeograph machine, which was kind of weird, but I wanted it badly enough to break down their resistance.

My life changed after that. I came home from school to spend the evenings pounding out letters and fanzines with the energy of a demon. Although this may have appeared harmless enough, I was still the same naive kid, so, I got into trouble.

I belonged to a national fan organization that had a thousand members and published a monthly letterzine, that is, a fanzine consisting entirely of letters written by members. Each issue contained ongoing conversation and commentary where topics could be raised or dropped as letter writers wished. These days it’s called social media, but then it was just fandom.

Some guy from Oklahoma wrote an irate letter demanding that all communists should be kicked out of the organization. I couldn’t decipher a context for this demand. It didn’t strike me as a pressing issue for the membership of a science fiction fan organization, but the author was adamant. He offered no practical suggestions for ferreting out Reds; perhaps he just wanted to make it clear where he stood.

I was immature in many ways, but less so about politics. I’d read some Marx and a little history and knew which end of the political spectrum I preferred. On an impulse, I fired off a letter to the zine proclaiming myself a card-carrying Communist. For good measure, I advocated the violent overthrowal of the government. Take that, Mr. Oklahoma; you can’t keep us out; we’re already in!

I thought it was a satirical triumph, but it offended a few, including the guy from Oklahoma. Most people ignored it, even if it represented a violation of the Smith Act, the McCarthy era law banning all public declarations of overthrowing the government. The furor died down quickly, though, and I figured the matter laid to rest.

A few weeks later, I was called down to the principal’s office. He had a copy of the fanzine with my letter. What is this? It’s a fanzine, I said. This irritated him. He waved his finger and told me that the FBI had paid a visit to ask if it was a school publication. That seemed odd to me because the name and address of the organization was printed on the masthead of every issue. You’re in a lot of trouble, he said and sent me back to class.

I dismissed the principal’s concern. Who would assume a fanzine was a school publication? Just because it was a crude, mimeographed sheaf of paper? I puzzled over the matter but forgot it by the time I walked home after school. Entering the front door with visions of chocolate chip cookies and milk, I found my parents sitting at either end of our wraparound sofa. This was unusual; they rarely used the sofa at the same time. Perched between them was a man in a suit. He introduced himself as Mr. Clark from the FBI. The blood rushed out of my head. Meekly, I sat down next to him where he patted the cushion.

He also had a copy of the fanzine, open to the page with my letter. No doubt he’d already shown my parents. They sat with frozen expressions; lips so tight they could squeak. Their disappointment was unmistakable.

The federal agent asked me to explain the letter. I’d seen enough tv shows about the feds to imagine that I could be downtown, cuffed to a chair under a glaring lightbulb. In time, I knew I would confess to everything, so I told Mr. Clark why I had written the letter, explaining fandom, fanzines, and all the details of my impulse.

So, he said, it was a kind of joke?

I admitted that it was, or at least that had been the idea. He chuckled, mildly and without humor. Yes, he said, that’s funny. My parents didn’t look like they thought it was funny. At this point, I agreed with them, despite what the agent said.

He nodded with gravity and gave a short speech, commenting that I was an intelligent boy and that our nation needed folks, especially young folks, who could think and write and that I shouldn’t be discouraged by this incident but should keep writing. He went on in this vein, leaving me unsure whether I was being investigated or anointed. His praise struck me as disingenuous, but if it scored points with my parents, who were going to kill me as soon as he left, I’d take it.

When he finished, we all stood up together, shook hands around, and saw him to the door. As soon as he left, my parents turned, fixing me in the glare of their headlights. They were furious. But they weren’t violent, ever, which is why I’d rarely been spanked at home and not for at least a decade. They didn’t know what to say, though. Probably the anger was mixed with confusion and dismay over what a strange child they’d raised. A fifteen-year-old Commie? Where did he come from?

They didn’t kill me; they did something even worse. Without a word, they marched into my bedroom. I didn’t dare follow. When they came out, my father carried the typewriter in front of him like a contaminated object, and my mother cradled an armload of manuscripts and journals. They said nothing; those things just disappeared. There were no conditions, no ultimatums. I knew better than to raise an objection or ask for leniency. I’d never seen them like that; it was scary.

I don’t know if they read my stuff. Probably some of it; I’m sure they were curious. It was mostly bad science fiction and even worse poetry. Nothing radical, though. After a month, my mother gave back the typewriter and the papers. Here you go, she said.

We never discussed the incident. I know I put them through several varieties of hell with my odd shenanigans, and they got used to having a son who was some kind of rebel. They started paying attention to the political situation in the country, which was hard to ignore if you owned a television or subscribed to a newspaper. The coffins flew back from Vietnam, the sons of friends and neighbors. My father had served in the Coast Guard, but he hated it, and the military. My parents didn’t want me to go to Vietnam. They wanted me to stay alive, go to college and do them proud, be a scientist or doctor. Several years later, when I was dodging the draft, I made a quick trip to see them. Be careful what you say on the phone, my mother told me as if it were neighborhood gossip. There’s a wiretap on it.   

2

Transactions

By the time I was a senior in high school, I’d heard about LSD but had no idea how to get my hands on it. No matter how badly I wanted drugs, I lived in a small town in Eastern Washington; if any other kids had access, they kept tight lips about it. I settled for wallpapering my bedroom with psychedelic posters from San Francisco and listened repeatedly to any scrap of recorded acid rock I could find. I lay on my bed and daydreamed about the magic of cerebral chemistry as if it were a pipeline to enlightenment. Sure, I could get beer and wine, but I was unimpressed with the gateway stuff. I wanted cosmic shit, full bore.

After graduating from high school in 67, I went to Seattle to attend the University of Washington. By the time I checked in to the dorm, I’d lost interest in studying philosophy. I attended classes for a week before walking out of my dorm and into the streets. I wanted to be a hippie. I didn’t think about it, I just traded in my old life. There was no adjustment period between bourgeois suburbia and psychedelic wilderness, between straight kid and stoner freak. I turned on and dropped out. Like everyone else in the scene, I now lived in the jungle of the black market, the unlicensed pharmacy of the streets. I soon learned that consumers and dealers were often the same people and the best way to keep yourself high was to sell the product. I was hungry, so I did what I had to do; the fact that it was a crime just made it more interesting.

It turned out that I was a lousy drug dealer. I failed to make money and I did bad things. For success, you had to be sharp, enterprising, and ruthless—in other words, a rock-hard capitalist. Not really my skill set. Still, you couldn’t immerse yourself in the drug scene without getting involved in transactions. And I was immersed. From morning till night, you would find me on the crowded streets of the University District, or on the park-like periphery of campus known as Hippie Hill. From The Hill you could sit on the lawn and overlook the throngs of idlers milling around 42nd Street, the heart of the scene. It was a magnet for the kids from the suburbs and anyone else wanting acid, speed, or grass. If you stood around and looked like you belonged, you’d soon be asked if you had anything for sale. If you knew someone who was holding, you’d be happy to make the connection. Or maybe you were holding a stash for a buddy. No matter how the deal went down, it went down.

Confusion proliferated on 42nd Street and the adjacent blocks of University Avenue. There were so many people wandering the sidewalks and leaning up against the buildings that it must have been hard for the narcs to sort out who was doing what. When cop cars showed up, people drifted away; when the police moved on, the scene reassembled itself. Undercover agents stood out like sore thumbs, were quickly identified, and openly mocked. It took the police awhile to figure out how to deal with the hippies; these new freaks didn’t function like the previous generations of drug dealers. They believed in the free market, the purest form of unregulated commerce, but they turned it into a festival. People wore flamboyant clothes, grew tons of hair, preened like renaissance fops, and gave out free samples because it was fun and good for business, too. One evening somebody slipped through the crowd passing out amyl nitrite poppers; before long 42nd Street was a seething mass of stoned hippies, hundreds of them. The streetlights got busted and freaks careened from curb to curb in the darkness, a sort of proto-mosh pit. The cops never showed up; wisely, they let it die out on its own. The next day, people and things were back in their places.

I spent most of my time on the Ave leaning against walls and parked cars with my red-haired high-school friend Kid Carrot and his buddy Maniac. When a potential customer walked by, which could be anyone they didn’t know, one of them caught an eye and barked acid, grass, speed. Mostly that’s what people wanted. Sometimes there were guys, usually rail-thin, looking for crystal. That meant crystal methedrine, an injectable speed that fucked you up like nothing else on the streets. Both Carrot and Maniac had shot crystal for a couple of years before burning out. They wanted nothing to do with it. I helped them however I could: errands, holding, deliveries, solicitation, whatever. As a result, I had acid and grass for myself, as much as I wanted. I took their advice and stayed away from the speed.

Many dealers stashed their product in the bushes on Hippie Hill, so they didn’t have to hold the contraband. You contacted a customer on the street and took them up to the lawn; while they sat and counted their cash, you ducked into the shrubs to grab a lid. A lid was a bag of marijuana, supposedly an ounce, but usually less than that. A Baggie brand plastic sandwich bag served as the standard container, rolled up and tucked into its own flap. A dozen or so lids could be packed into a shopping bag and stashed under a carpet of leaves. Because it was all part of the Hippie good vibe, people didn’t work too hard to hide the dope. It needed to be handy, that was the point, yet still far enough away to disavow ownership if the cops showed up.

Somebody, I don’t remember who, got the idea of raiding these stashes, many of which were left overnight. First thing in the morning, we’d slink around like cartoon crooks, combing the foliage, searching for drugs. We found stuff and we sold it as fast as possible. Clearly, this was a violation of the Hippie Code, but I don’t remember any ethical deliberation on our part. We knew we didn’t want to get caught, that seemed the primary concern. For a few weeks, we made some easy money, then everybody got wise and stopped hiding stuff in the bushes. My best theft, if that’s the right adjective, was finding a small duffle with about twenty lids, a baggie of speed tabs, and a .32 automatic pistol. I ran straight to Carrot and showed him my loot. Jesus, he said, and took the pistol, which he sold within five minutes without leaving the hill. Somebody else bought all the speed and we sold off the lids one by one. The gun changed everything, though. Suddenly, the enterprise seemed a lot more dangerous. I don’t know how we got away with these heists without getting the shit kicked out of us, if not shot. We didn’t brag about it, so maybe nobody figured out where their dope went missing. Plus, that’s how the free market works: dog eat dog.

Grass made up most of the product sold on the streets. People smoked it like tobacco, in skinny joints passed from hand to hand like a sacrament; it epitomized the vibe, the ethos that everyone wanted, or thought they did. In those days, the quality of marijuana covered a large spectrum, from the three-toke high of Acapulco Gold to the foggy buzz of chain-smoked leaf that claimed no origin. If you had good stuff, you made smaller lids. The price was the same: ten bucks a lid. You didn’t change the price; you adjusted the contents. If customers complained, you shrugged your shoulders; there were other customers.

One day a friend of Maniac’s returned from a